British politicos to rush through Digital Economy Bill

The current prime minister of the United Kingdom will take a trip from 10 Downing Street today to Buckingham Palace and get on his knees to the Queen of England to ask her to dissolve parliament.

This means a general election will be held on Thursday, the 6th of May, leaving a number of bills outstanding, including the highly controversial Digital Economy Bill.

It is due to have its second reading in the House of Commons today and will be rushed through to become law before parliament is dissolved.

There’s been vast controversy about this bill during its passage through the UK’s parliamentary system. It proposes sanctions on illegal file sharers that could result in people being cut off from internet access.

The bill has had great support from the music industry and while all political parties agree tthat illegal file sharing is a bad thing, many people are concerned that the bill, a 24,000 words bit of work, is now unlikely to have sufficient scrutiny in the House of Commons before being rushed into law.

Other measures in the bill include a potential ban on free wi-fi. ISPs oppose it because if it becomes law they will be turned into internet policemen. The British Computer Society opposes it. Civil libertarians oppose it because if, for example, some kid in your house uses your LAN to download ditties from the interweb, the whole household could well be cut off.

But only when you’ve been deluged with loads of letters accusing you of stealing music and you’ll have to pay your own good cash money to defend your household from the allegations.